Paris, London, Germany, and Switzerland are the settings for a tale of espionage in which a final, conclusive confrontation takes place between George Smiley and his Russian adversary, Karla.

"George Smiley is no one's idea of a spy--which is why he's such a natural. But Smiley apparently made a mistake when he concluded that the affable Mr. Fennan had nothing to hide. Why, then, did the man from the Foreign Office shoot himself in the head only hours later? Or did he?"--Page 4 of cover.

Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George...

"No doubt remains, a mole has infiltrated the Circus, code name for the British Secret Intelligence Service. It can only be one of four men operating at the very highest level. Sidelined agent George Smiley is covertly tapped to root out the mole, a task that requires a painstaking dig through the double-blind world of Cold War espionage and his own past." -- Container.

A burnt-out British spy defects to East Germany as a ruse to feed false information to the government.

The preceeding novel in the George Smiley series, Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy ended with the devastating unmasking of a double agent at the heart of the British Secret Service. Now, in The honourable schoolboy, George Smiley, who has assumed the unenviable job of restoring the health and reputation of his demoralized organization, goes on the offensive.